It is heart, in that sense that can bring purpose to these things. Heart does not come in the form of ink and pixels. It is heart that realizes purpose, that raises motivation, that addresses what is seen, that speaks to the practitioners, that advises and affects so that tasks, decisions and choices are refined and faith built up, that offers things an instant replay would never include.

There is so much to help us do better at survival in cancers, and so many more new treatments out there, but the one thing that is often overlooked is – is it the right thing to do for the patient? So I was thrilled to see that MOQC is focusing on hospice. It’s so underlooked in oncology these days.

As a social worker, I love that MOQC realizes the importance of bringing social workers to the table for the discussion about quality and care of patients.

Please consider talking with your family and loved ones about death and dying and hospice and palliative care now, long before you need to. Patients can make decisions of what they actually want so that family members don’t have to guess. I highly recommend getting into hospice whenever you are eligible and taking advantage of all the services to help patients and families. They are experts! Hospice isn’t about “giving up,” it’s about changing your goals to live the best and most comfortable life you can until the end.

MOQC has given us the opportunity to benchmark our quality data against other cancer programs throughout the state. This helps us to identify opportunities for improvement.

I did not have this when I was in practice in Pennsylvania. This type of initiative didn’t exist. So I’ve seen MOQC evolve over the years. I show the aggregate data to my partners and say, “Listen, here’s where we’re doing well. Here’s where we’re failing, and we need to make changes.”

We can all benefit from a broader range of education, expertise, and assets to improve the quality care for our cancer patients. The relationships that I have built alone from this consortium are phenomenal. I can tap into them at any point if I need resources or have a question of what is best for our cancer center.

I’m fortunate to have had many volunteer opportunities in my life – especially during the past several years as I edged toward and moved fully into retirement. The most rewarding and fulfilling of that volunteer work has been as a member of POQC. The reasons are many, but most notable has been having a valued – truly valued – patient voice for cancer care.

We have benefitted from so many things from MOQC as a small site: the smoking cessation program, oral oncolytics, hospice care, pain management, physician support, the ongoing dialog. The list is endless.

Across all of the various regions, we hear and learn from each other. We grow as a group.

I’m grateful for their ongoing focus on care for the patients the families. MOQC covers it all.

I will use the information presented to improve my conversations with patients related to palliative care, integration of palliative care into the management of oncology patients and improve the care delivered to my patients through improving my practice’s performance on my state and national quality measures.

I think high tides raise all ships – the measures we review and compare all help us do better even if it is competitive or not wanting to see your own practice not meeting the metric. I feel the collaborative group effort, even though some of us are “competitors,” makes us all share best practices to improve care across the state.

As an Oncology Nurse Navigator, I meet with patients soon after they receive a new cancer diagnosis. One of the strong messages from this program was that Palliative Care can and should be provided during every encounter by every member of the team. I will learn more about providing Palliative Care and incorporate care and communication techniques into every encounter.

There are aspects of MOQC that bring in other voices that we don’t, as clinicians, sometimes hear in that way because we see them in the patient exam room. But to have patient representation at MOQC also helps because it allows us to get some feedback, as clinicians, from the group that we need to address.